


Don’t Be Anything But Okay

by skoosiepants



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Kid Fic, M/M, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 15:19:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6810778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skoosiepants/pseuds/skoosiepants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Oh my god.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Ben pops open the car door and says, “Please don’t embarrass me, Dad.”</i>
</p>
<p><i>Stiles flaps a hand, still staring at the magnificent sight before him.  There are glistening arm muscles and a sweaty tank top and then the vision bends over and</i> holy god.  <i>He has to look away; it’s too much to take in all at once, he might swoon.   </i></p>
<p>OR-</p>
<p>Stiles has a teenager and Derek has a plant nursery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don’t Be Anything But Okay

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr for the prompt:  
>  _anonymous said: Hi! I’ve been reading your tumblr fics for hours now and I love them! This new ‘more you might like’ thing tumblr has is really messing up my productivity.. lol. Dunno if you take prompts right now but I’m really craving some girl!stiles or single parent stiles/derek with a teenage kid, and I was kinda hoping you would want to write something? even if you don’t I wanted to tell you that all your drabbles are great. hope you have a good day :) -- nineteenninetyeightt (sideblog)_
> 
> Cleaned up and edited. Title is from Zolof the Rock and Roll Destroyer, Super OK.

“Oh my god.”

Ben pops open the car door and says, “Please don’t embarrass me, Dad.”

Stiles flaps a hand, still staring at the magnificent sight before him. There are glistening arm muscles and a sweaty tank top and then the vision bends over and _holy god_. He has to look away; it’s too much to take in all at once, he might swoon.  

Ben hangs onto the passenger side doorframe, glaring mulishly at him.

Stiles says, “How can you deny me my only joy in life?”

“Mr. Hale is my boss,” Ben says, like this is any incentive for Stiles to stop ogling his ass.

“Oh good, he’s legal,” Stiles says, just to get a rise out of him, and Ben slaps a hand over his face and groans.

Not that Mr. Hale looks anything like jailbait, but the only Mr. Hale he knows of is well into his forties, and this guy is dreamboat levels of hotness; his face, when he turns to look over at the car, is unlined, and only the supernatural have that much luck in the genetic lottery—werewolf. Definitely a werewolf, Stiles is so screwed.

Stiles sighs and says, “Remember. No magic.”

Ben rolls his eyes and straightens up. “Right.”

“I mean it!” Stiles says. The last thing they need is for Ben to blow up the newly opened plant nursery. Deaton’s currently at a loss as to why Ben’s magic is so destructive. He inherited Stiles’s spark, but magnified to a thousand, and then when he was five he started accidentally setting things on fire. Stiles greatly suspects Ben’s mom is secretly a dragon on top of being kind of an asshole. But if Ben can learn how to control it, Deaton thinks they’re looking at finally gaining a new Emissary for the McCall pack, and Stiles is equal parts excited and terrified by that possible outcome.

Ben’s fifteen, he’d really like him to have the normal high school experience that Stiles never had.

Hale is still looking over at them, so Stiles throws him a jaunty wave.

Hale frowns and lifts an arm to swipe his wrist over his forehead. The shirt he’s wearing is basically a rag, it’s obscene, and no one doing manual labor should be sporting jeans that tight.

“Have fun,” Stiles says. “I’ll pick you up at four.”

Ben just slams the door shut in response.

*

Stiles shows up at 3:30, because it’s a Saturday and he’s bored without Ben and also because he figures he can wander around and stare at Hale.

Or not stare, because staring is rude. He can glance at him surreptitiously while he looks at the perennials. He’s been thinking about sprucing up the front garden.

He spots Ben with a hose and a boonie watering several flats of flowering plants out front and strolls over, hands in his pockets.

“Nice hat,” he says. “Wanna help me choose some flowers for around the mailbox?”

“No,” Ben says without looking up.

“C’mon, hasn’t Hale taught you all about impatiens and lilies by now?” Stiles rocks back on his heels and glances over the sea of flowers and is rewarded by Hale hauling a bag of what looks like potting soil over his shoulder. The nursery is busy, and it could be Stiles’s imagination, but it’s like time slows down, like everyone’s watching Hale pack the soil into the back of a little old lady’s sedan and then wipe the back of his neck with a ragged cloth.

“Dad,” Ben says.

“Shhhhh,” Stiles says, batting at the finger Ben’s poking into his side. He says, “This job thing is the greatest idea you ever had.”

Hale smiles at the old lady—pure sunshine, Stiles is glad he’s wearing his shades—and then his mouth promptly drops into a scowl as he makes his way back up the walk. His gaze skips over Stiles for a bare second, and Stiles feels his heart beating all the way down in his hands.

Christ.

“ _Dad_ ,” Ben says again. He’s got the hose off when Stiles finally manages to look at him—boonie swiped off his head and stuffed into his back pocket. He frowns and says, “If you wait in the car while I roll up the hose, I’ll try to put in a good word for you with Mr. Hale.”

Stiles pats him on the head and says, “Deal.”

*

Ben works at the Hale nursery a half-day on Sunday and brings home news that Hale doesn’t like small-talk, goofing off, or women.

Stiles arches both his eyebrows and says, “Tell me more,” as he slaps together some spaghetti for dinner.

Ben’s cheeks flush and he says, “I mean, there are all these women who show up. And he tries to help them out with the plants, but I think they just want to stare at his ass.”

“Hale hates women who stare at his ass, good to know,” Stiles says absently, stirring the sauce as it slowly heats up.

Ben taps his fingers on the counter. “So he gets super frustrated and then his sister, Cora, stomps out and makes them buy a bunch of plants that they probably don’t need.”

Stiles glances over at him and says, “Cora, huh?”

Ben rolls his eyes, but the flush has now engulfed his entire face. “She yells at me a lot about overwatering.”

“Right,” Stiles says, staring at him meaningfully. Yelling is not a deterrent for crushing with Ben; he just hopes this Cora character is being super appropriate and not gross.

Ben buries his face in his arms and says, “I hate you.”

*

Stiles drops Ben off at the nursery on his way to the station on Monday. He gamely waves at Hale as he pulls out of his parking spot, but Hale just stares at him, blank-faced. He’s not frowning, really, he just seems sort of—bewildered by Stiles’s general existence. Which Stiles is pretty used to; he can totally work with this.

First step: introduce himself, preferably while not staring at Hale’s ass.

He manages the first part that afternoon, but is it his fault Hale is crouched down over a line of seedlings at the time? The jeans are a disaster, Stiles is lucky he can remember his own name.

Hale tips his head up and says, “Derek,” though, so at least they’re on a first name basis now. Awesome.

And then some scary dark-haired lady that Stiles can only assume is Cora swoops in and Stiles ends up with a young magnolia tree that he’s almost entirely certain won’t fit in his car.

Also: Stilinksi men definitely have a type; it’s probably not as depressing as it should be.

Ben looks torn between frowning at Stiles and beaming dreamily at Cora.

Derek’s expression clearly says, ‘beat it, asshole,’ and Stiles staunchly decides one loss doesn’t mean the war is done.

*

Over the course of a week, this is what Stiles finds out about Derek Hale: he reads crime novels on his sporadic breaks; he gives out free waters to little old ladies; he’s teaching Ben about what plants to plant where; he hates all the fawning attention he gets for being a hot-ass, but will happily use it to his advantage, i.e. that time he got Stiles to get everyone ice cream.

Stiles spent sixty bucks on ice cream for the staff; he still has no idea how that happened.

Derek’s favorite plants are forsythia, even though they’re only pretty for about a month out of the year.

He has a degree in horticulture, but briefly wanted to be a sheep farmer in college.

He’s never been married.

Two out of his last five exes tried to kill him.

All this he finds out from Ben, who finds out from Cora, so Stiles doesn’t actually know how reliable any of the information is—like how he likes cats and hates dogs, even though he’s a werewolf.

Which has never been confirmed, but it’s not like the supernatural go around shouting it from the rooftops. The Hales probably don’t even know that Ben is a magical time bomb and/or possible dragon shifter—Deaton neither confirms nor denies it whenever Stiles brings it up.

Stiles is fully prepared to spend his Saturday morning hanging around, getting advice about what he should start with, if he wanted to plant a vegetable garden out back, cunningly worming his way into Derek’s good graces.

And then everything goes to shit and he gets himself shot.

*

He took a double shift Friday so he could have all of Saturday off, and he’s deeply regretting it now—now that he has a hole in his leg and he’s in the hospital, and, apparently, Ben’s gone and blown up one of the Hale greenhouses. It’s like terrible things keep piling on top of terrible things. He’s getting a lecture from his _dad_.

“I’m a cop,” Stiles says, interrupting his treatise on caution and calling for backup—which he _did_ , thank you very much. “You’ve been shot _several times_ before.”

“Not several,” his dad says, frowning.

They’re not giving Stiles anywhere near the good stuff, and he’s in pain and cranky and he just wants to know what happened with Ben.

“Ben’s fine,” his dad says, surprisingly calm, even though the grip he has on Stiles’s shoulder is bordering on uncomfortable. “He just had a panic attack that manifested itself in fire and destruction.”

Stiles buries his face in his hands, conscious of the needle they’ve stabbed into his arm in the guise of medicine. He’s perfectly capable of swallowing pills, he doesn’t get why they had to jab an IV line into him.

“Whose idea was it to tell him about me while he was at work?” Stiles says. He’s not sure how they’re going to get all the money needed to repair an entire fancy greenhouse, not to mention anything that was kept inside.

Stiles’s dad doesn’t bother answering. He lets him go, though, and then says, “Melissa’s holding him downstairs, are you ready?” just as the door bursts open and Ben yells, “DAD!”

“Hey, kiddo,” Stiles says. He feels suddenly worn thin. Just the sight of Ben and Ben’s crazy eyes and the slight singe he’s got on the ends of his hair make him feel like a collapsed balloon. Ben slips under his arms and sinks against his chest and Stiles runs his fingers through his hair and sighs. “I’m okay.”

“You got shot,” Ben says, voice muffled in his shirt.

“I did,” Stiles says. “But I’m okay.” The bullet missed his artery by a couple inches, tearing through muscle and out the other end. He’ll have some recovery and maybe a nifty cane for a while and then he’ll be fine.

“I blew up a greenhouse,” Ben says, sniffing.

“You did,” Stiles says, stifling a tired smile.

“Mr. Hale is going to fire me. Are you sure you’re okay?” Ben shifts back to look him directly in the face and Stiles feels like he’s been beaten in the leg with a tire iron, but he knows better than to show any weakness in front of Ben.

Stiles says, “Mr. Hale is not going to fire you.” He looks over at his dad. “Right?”

His dad sighs, long-sufferingly, and says, “I’ll have a word.”

*

Miraculously, Ben does not get fired. Deaton steps up his lessons to two mornings a week, though, and Derek won’t give Stiles a straight answer for how much they owe.

Ben has a haunted look and bitten nails and more nightmares than Stiles would like.

A mere week after he’s sent home, Stiles hobbles into the nursery.

Derek takes one look at him and says, “Shouldn’t you be in bed? Are you _driving_?” like an appalled mother hen, and Stiles is perversely gratified by the concern.

“It’s my left leg,” Stiles says instead of lying about how he’s definitely not allowed to drive, and that he probably shouldn’t be walking more than a couple feet at a time and that, in fact, his leg is screaming at him that he’s an idiot. “I’m here to settle up.”

Derek’s appalled look falls into a scowl. “No.”

They stare at each other for a long moment and Stiles sizes him up, from his muddy work boots, strong thighs, unreasonably shapely forearms, to the oddly fashionable quaff of his hair. Finally, he says, “Is it the werewolf thing? Supernatural solidarity? It’s possible that Ben’s mom had a bewitching glamour and a second row of hidden sharp teeth.”

Derek folds his arms over his chest, unimpressed. He says, “We have insurance. It was an accident.”

He seems sincere, if gruff. Stiles pokes him in the arm and says, “Ben thinks he’s a monster, so let up a little on the scowling if you don’t want to dock his pay.”

Derek’s face goes from stunned to blank to frowny and then settles, weirdly, on worried. “He’s not a monster,” he says.

“We don’t know what he is,” Stiles says, nodding, “but he’s not a monster.” Stiles leans heavily on his cane—wooden, with an elegant hook on the end—and says, “At least let Ben help with the rebuild. I’d offer, but there’d be considerable tears and pain involved.”

Derek’s gaze drops down to his leg, travels slowly up the rest of him, and his eyes are brightly amused when they catch on his face. It’s unexpected, but welcome. All Stiles had to do to get a little attention was get in a shoot-out with a nervous convenience store robber. Awesome.

Stiles clears his throat. He says, slightly sheepish, “So this is stupid? But I don’t think I can drive home.”

*

Pain mixed with exhaustion save Stiles from the worst of the embarrassment as Derek drives his car home.

At the house, Derek hops out of the driver’s seat and rounds the car in time to help haul Stiles out without having to awkwardly maneuver his way with his cane. As a delightful bonus, they end up nearly chest-to-chest, and Stiles grins at him winningly.

“Thanks,” he says, and Derek just blinks at him, lips slightly parted.

The silence goes from comfortable to weirdly charged to just plain weird, and finally Stiles clears his throat. “Uh.” He tries to gently extricate himself from Derek’s grip, but Derek just slips his hands from Stiles’s arms to his waist.

And then Ben yells, “Dad!” from the front stoop, door flung open wide, and Derek abruptly lets Stiles go and takes a giant step backward. Darn it.

Stiles sighs, leaning against the doorframe for balance. “Ben, everything’s fine. Why aren’t you at Deaton’s?” He’s supposed to be learning to control lightning or something, Stiles doesn’t even actually want to know. Or rather, he does want to know, but he’s had years and years of Deaton being vague at him, he knows enough now not to try until Ben can tell him himself.

“Dad,” Ben says, hands flailing, “you should be resting! Mr. Hale, _what are you doing_?”

Derek has his hands up, palms out, and says, “Nothing.”

“Absolutely nothing,” Stiles echoes forlornly.

He cheers minutely when Derek shoots him a tiny smile.

*

Ben sits in front of him on the coffee table, knees spread and face serious. He looks so like his grandpa right now, and it’s weirding Stiles out. He had a precocious teenage-hood, involving old magic trees and evil druids and rabid alpha werewolves, there were talks between them that started out like this but ended up as screaming matches and Stiles would rather forget about all of that forever.

“Dad,” Ben says, frowning.

“I do not need a lecture from my fifteen year old son who, let’s face it, still doesn’t really need to shave,” Stiles says. He’s got his bad leg propped up on a pillow, sitting sideways on the couch, his right foot on the floor and the TV clicker and a bowl of M&Ms resting on his stomach. He’s comfortable, relatively, and all he needs now is for Ben to move out of the way of Buying Alaska.

Ben says, “Mr. Hale likes you.” He says it like it’s the worst thing to ever happen in the world, but also like he’s resigned to it.

Stiles perks up. “Did he actually tell you that?” Because that would be weird, that he’s talking to Ben about him, but also awesome.

Ben ignores the question and says, “He’s letting me help with the greenhouse. He said he doesn't mind that Mom’s probably a demon.”

_Demon_! Stiles thinks—that makes so much more sense than dragon shifter. “Your mom’s not a demon,” he says with as much of a frown as he can manage.

Ben rolls his eyes. “Mom sent me a birthday card two months late this year with a five dollar bill inside. She thinks I’m thirteen.” It’s no longer a real sore point; Ben’s mom is just that bad at being a functional…human? for any of them to care anymore.

“She tries her best,” Stiles says, dutifully. Stiles isn’t the one who’s going to be blamed for Ben coming up with this demon _gold_ , that would violate the parental bond that him and Ben’s mom half-heartedly foster between them. “Anyway,” Stiles goes on. “ _Anyway_. What did Derek say about me?”

“We’re no longer talking about this,” Ben says, getting to his feet.

Stiles would follow him up, but by the time he got his butt off the couch Ben would probably be locked in his room. He yells after him as he disappears up the stairs, “You brought this on yourself!”

*

Stiles’s dad has taken away his car keys—a result of Ben tattling on Stiles sneaking out by himself—and thus he’s been stuck in his house and crazy bored for going on four days when there’s a knock on his door.

He calls out, “Hang on!” because it’s going to take him at least five minutes to leverage himself off the couch, find his cane and make his way to the front door.

Sometimes he wishes he’d opted for a crutch instead of the cane, but then he wouldn’t look nearly as sweet. He’s thinking about getting a duster, and maybe a cool hat.

He figures it’s probably someone from the station checking on him, maybe bringing him dinner—it couldn’t be Scott or his dad, who’d barge right in, and most of Ben’s friends are smart enough to honk from the driveway or just climb in through Ben’s window to avoid him altogether.

When he opens the door, though, it’s—Derek Hale. Derek Hale, in a soft-looking t-shirt and tight jeans, holding what looks like a casserole dish.

And then Derek says, “Hey,” and the tips of his ears turn pink and Stiles has no idea what’s happening here.

“Are you bringing me food?” he says.

“Cora made me,” he says, but Stiles can totally tell it was just an excuse. An excuse to see Stiles in all his…sick patient glory.

Stiles is dressed in worn sweats and an old Cyclones t-shirt—he’s pretty sure there’s a hole under one of the arms, and there’s an unfortunate stain on his ass. He just has to never turn around and it’ll be fine.

There’s the little matter of getting the casserole out of Derek’s arms without Stiles dropping it all over the floor, which ends up with both of them in the kitchen, hovering around the breakfast bar. This is awesome—Derek Hale is in his house, looking awkward and sort of shy. Stiles wants to fist pump, but he also doesn’t want to slip and brain himself on the edge of the counter.

Derek clears his throat and says, “There’s heating instructions taped to the top,” because of course there is, how adorable is that?

Then there’s a long and annoying car honk that not only reminds Stiles that Ben is somewhere in the house, but that he had plans for going out.

Stiles says, “Thanks,” and also, “I’m not sure how I’m gonna manage shoving it in the oven all by my lonesome with this cane and all, though,” he shakes it a little, “so maybe you should stay for dinner and help me out?” because he is motherfucking smooth with this shit.

Derek opens and closes his mouth, cocks his head, and then says, “I. Okay,” with his cheeks all rosy.

“Oh my god, Dad,” Ben says, thundering down the steps. “Oh my god.” He pauses in the kitchen doorway and says, “I’m leaving. I’ll be back by eleven, please don’t be gross while I’m gone.” He turns to Derek and says, “It was so thoughtful of you to stop by with dinner, Mr. Hale, thanks,” and then he glares at Stiles again before storming out.

“Your curfew is ten!” Stiles yells after him, then softly curses himself for arguing that when he’ll have roughly five hours to convince Derek to be _gross_ with him. This is a golden opportunity, Stiles shouldn’t waste it.

He tries to waggle his eyebrows seductively, but Derek just ducks his head and laughs.

*

Ben swans in at 10:30—an unspoken compromise that probably makes Stiles’s parenting suspect, but Ben’s too good a kid for it to make much of a difference.

“Blow anything up?” Stiles says from his sprawl on the sofa.

Ben flips him off, which is just rude. Rude, and worth a grounding if Stiles didn’t flip Ben off at least once a day, too.

Ben sits down on the coffee table, blocking the TV again, and says, “So. Cora.”

“Gross. So gross, she’s only a year younger than me, you realize that, right? She could be your mom, if your mom wasn’t hiding in a cave in Mongolia, hording piles of gold.” Stiles lied; calling her a dragon is still the most fun. He tries to crane his neck around Ben to see if Jeremy Wade will really find the illusive oarfish on his dive into the deep, but Ben has grown into his broad shoulders much earlier than Stiles had, it’s super annoying.

Stiles sighs and flops back onto the couch. “Find some romantic interests your own age and we’ll talk.” It’s not that Stiles doesn’t want Ben to date, it’s just that so far Ben’s only wanted to date older women and Harry Shum Jr. And, Stiles suspects, that blond kid who works at the diner. Infinitely the more appropriate prospect, but Ben’s being weird about it. As usual. It might have something to do with his tendency to set things on fire when he’s emotional.

Ben scowls and says, “How was your night?”

“My night was very adulty,” Stiles says, and watches with smug satisfaction as Ben makes a face of disgust.

His night actually wasn’t all that adulty. They'd had dinner and then Stiles fell asleep halfway through Dateline Mystery; it was embarrassing in ways that Stiles refuses to think about. And now he’s wide awake and Derek had disappeared after, Stiles is pretty sure, covering him with an afghan and kissing him on the cheek.

The cheek-kissing may have been his imagination, but Stiles usually doesn’t have dreams that chaste.

“Now,” Stiles points the clicker at the armchair, “move aside and let’s witness the magic of River Monsters.”

*

Stiles gets his keys back on a Wednesday, and only because he has to drive to PT, and because he gives his dad the acceptable lie that he won’t drive anywhere else but PT and home again—which is only acceptable because they both know that his dad knows that he’s definitely lying.

It’s fine, he’s practically off all his painkillers and his leg just gets a little stiff if he’s in one position too long.

He shows up at Hale’s nursery close to closing, with the intent to pick up Ben after his shift, only Ben isn’t there.

He wanders the aisles and sing-songs, “Benji, here boy,” and whistles in a bid to annoy his son into appearing, but no dice.

“He’s not here,” Derek says. He swipes his dirty gloves together as he gets up from his crouch behind some rose bushes.

“He didn’t skip out on work,” Stiles says. It’s not a question, mainly because he knows Ben wouldn’t actually skip out on work.

Derek gives him a little half-smile, and Stiles suddenly realizes that there’s a rip along the side of Derek’s tank top that practically makes it into a half shirt, and that, in deference to the summer heat, Derek has swapped out the jeans for flimsy shorts that stop mid-thigh. He vaguely registers the circling would-be gardeners trying to get Derek’s attention, but Derek apparently only has eyes for him, so Stiles is going to repay that tenfold by not giving a damn.

Derek shrugs and says, “I let him go a little early to get ready for his date.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, then, “Wait, what? Date? Please let it not be Cora.” He’s not _super_ worried that it’s her, though, but it’s also not going to be Harry Shum Jr., so that leaves… “Are you telling me he finally got up the nerve to ask out Cute Diner Blond?”

Derek’s eyebrows go up to judging levels, but he says, “I think Cute Diner Blond asked _him_ out.”

Stiles clutches at his chest dramatically, betrayed that Ben didn’t tell him about his date. This milestone. He should be at home taking pictures through the blinds like a creeper right now as he’s picked up, which is probably, definitely why Ben didn’t actually tell him about his date.

Stiles grins at Derek and says, “Wanna go to dinner with me?”

*

In Stiles defense, he didn’t _actually_ think Cute Diner Blond would take Ben to the diner where he works for a date.

Stiles isn’t going to judge, they’re teenagers, but… really?

“I’m not stalking him,” Stiles says to Derek, shaking a fry at him.

Derek says, “Sure,” but he’s relaxed in the booth, and both of them are, to their credit, trying not to notice Ben and his date on the other side of the room.

Stiles says, “Should we treat them to ice cream? I feel like we should treat them to ice cream,” fidgeting in his seat.

Derek closes his hand over Stiles’s where it’s worrying at a napkin, his fork, both of their straw wrappers—he’s simultaneously concerned Ben will notice them and freak out and also that Ben won’t notice them and he’ll have to watch Ben and his date hold hands or worse. He makes a face.

Derek says, “We should pay and get out of here, and I’ll treat _you_ to ice cream.”

Derek is an angel. Derek is a hot heavenly body sent from above; he’s made of kitten fluff and good decisions.

Stiles says, “Let’s go.”

*

Stiles feels like a teenager, standing on his front stoop, moonlight making Derek’s hair gleam silver as they stare into each other’s eyes. It’s hot out, Stiles’s palms are sweaty and his heart is pounding high up in his throat.

He leans heavily on his cane and sighs when Derek kisses him, gripping the front of his shirt to hold him close. He tastes like chocolate and marshmallows, and Stiles would climb him like a tree if he thought his leg could take it, and if Ben wasn’t blinking the light on and off.

“Crap,” Stiles says, pulling back so their lips are barely touching.

There are crinkles at the corners of Derek’s eyes when he grins all the way, when he laughs and tips their foreheads together.

“This is his revenge,” Stiles says. “He probably saw us at the diner.”

Derek’s shoulders shake with mirth, and Stiles takes pride in the way this Derek is so different from the one he met over a month ago.

“He’s a good kid,” Derek says.

“He’s a pain in the ass,” Stiles says, but he’s grinning too, because _yeah, he is_. Ben’s the best.

Derek nods and says, “He should come out with us on the next full moon. You both should.”

“You realize he’s not actually a were-dragon, right?” Stiles says. And even though Ben’s mom is probably cursed to reveal her true decomposed corpse form under beams of moonlight, Stiles has actually tested all sorts of full moon theories over the years; it doesn’t seem to do anything to either of them. Stiles’s spark is still pathetic, and Ben is still a ball of raw, potential magic all hours of every day.

Derek says, voice soft and low, “I’m inviting you to meet my family, Stiles. We can handle some fireworks, if it comes to that.” He cradles Stiles’s free hand between his own, thumbs brushing the back of it soothingly. “Okay?”

Stiles could make a joke here—he could make a few, at everyone’s expense, including his own—but instead he kisses Derek on the cheek and says, “Yeah, okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes I write stuff on [tumblr](http://pantstomatch.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Hale's Horticulture](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10968546) by [Villainette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Villainette/pseuds/Villainette)




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